There is a pressing need in the art for an efficient, user-friendly process capable of supporting all aspects of object unit life cycle management. Previously, low maintenance object unit management has been addressed with only partial success.
The present invention, when applied to inventory and equipment management, directly supports the testing, assembly, and shipping of equipment units in a manufacturing environment, the receipt, assembly, installation, testing, maintenance and repair in an operations environment, and the transfer object units shipped between a vendor and customer.
In the prior art, object unit location description and maintenance has been achieved by using a Hierarchically Coded Location Address (HCLA) where all elements of the address are hierarchically related to other elements of the address. Filley (U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,488) discloses a system and method for the inventory of physical assets wherein each asset is associated with its absolute geographic location expressed in terms of latitude, longitude and elevation, each to within one foot of accuracy. Filley, therefore, is limited by its methodology to objects that occupy at least one cubic foot of space and does not purport to use relational information.
In some instances, prior art makes use of relational information; e.g., the location of a box containing X is computed from the location of a box containing A, and the relational information that both X and A are in the same box. Vereen (U.S. Pat. No. 4,509,123) discloses an automated tracking process for items of manufacture and inventory in which each item and each grouping and location of items is tracked. The process relates an item to its container, a technique well-known in the art and widely followed in automated processes before 1985. Unlike the present invention, Vereen does not keep track of the location of the item in its container, and the location of a Vereen container cannot be defined until after the container is defined.
Varley (U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,140) defines an apparatus for receiving articles to be processed, storing them, and returning them to their owners. The receiving process creates a relationship between an empty container that will hold the article and its position. The issuing process identifies the location of the container holding the processed article so that the article can be returned to the customer. The article to be tracked or its container are not uniquely identified, only the location of the container is tracked whereas the present invention tracks the object of interest directly as well as its location.
Smith et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,589) discloses a warehouse product monitoring and control process that directs the distribution of a particular product that meets order requirements and then tracks the product to ensure that the order is filled.
Bennett et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,591,983) discloses a process for controlling a bill of materials created for filling customer orders for specially configured products to ensure that the components listed in the bill of materials are compatible with each other.
Abraham et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,639,875) discloses a process for checking the quantity and types of articles in racks in a vending machines. Inventory location detail is limited to the pre-defined locations in the machine. The present invention defines a process for maintenance of a perpetual inventory with detail down to the smallest physical unit whereas Abraham et al. discloses a process that supports only the inventory accounting of objects with fairly uniform characteristics and calculating net changes since the last physical inventory of the vending machine.
Finally, Schribner et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,688,026) discloses a process wherein energized radio frequency energy is used to identify locations and objects. Schribner et al. does not support tracking of objects as they move between locations and is limited to taking inventories.
An important objective of object tracking is accounting for inventory. Inventory management tracks descriptive information, comprising part numbers quantities, and location to the level of detail required for internal management accounting and reporting purposes. A significant enhancement in control in prior art was achieved by tracking an object unit with a unique descriptive number (e.g., manufacturer's serial number). Using a unique descriptive number for each object unit permits the maintenance of a record of the tracked object that contains the unit's descriptive information, as well as its location with coded hierarchical address schema, to the extent it can be detailed for management accounting applications. Thus, in prior art, lower level object units that were removed, repaired, and interchanged on a routine basis normally were either not tagged or not linked to a related higher level object other than by a common location address.
The lack of lower level location information in prior art management accounting processes renders said processes inadequate for most engineering and operations management applications which require more comprehensive and detailed information on the object systems they deploy, use and maintain than is needed for most accounting systems. Engineering and operations management applications require object unit descriptions on multiple hierarchy levels(HL) and maintenance of the relationships between the objects that comprise the object system.
To maintain the more detailed addresses required, a Hierarchically Coded Location Address (HCLA) has been continually expanded in prior art. Thus, to achieve the greater detail required for comprehensive management of object systems in engineering and operations applications, the HCLAs maintained on records of the object unit were simply extended. The integration of components relative to Parents, and Parents relative to components, was cumbersome and ineffective with high levels of maintenance involved.
In prior art, the complexity of using complete HCLAs substantially limited practical applications in engineering or operational environments. Complexity problems were overcome, but computing and data entry costs were prohibitive. Since communication of object unit location in prior art was achieved by a coded, detailed hierarchical address schema or hierarchical address, complete and accurate use of the hierarchical address schema to establish the complete HCLA of an object unit required either extensive counting from a beginning reference point or reference to complex tables, templates, diagrams, charts, or schematics for each level of the hierarchical address.
In prior art, a container was loosely referred to as a "parent" and the subject object unit was thought of as a "component." A parent meant any "ancestor" of an object unit that existed in a hierarchical scheme at a plurality of levels above the object unit. In the present invention, Ancestor refers to any related object unit that contains, holds, or physically controls a subject object unit. Ancestor is further specified hierarchically as any related object unit located at a higher hierarchical level than the subject object unit. Parent refers to the most immediate Ancestor that most immediately contains, holds or physically controls the subject object unit, the Parent being located at the next higher level in the hierarchy.
In prior art, referencing of an object unit was accomplished either by using an Ancestor's preaffixed address, a template, manually recording the hierarchical address, or a combination of the three. However, providing the hierarchical address codes to end users proved to be costly and complex. Reducing the number of steps needed to determine and record an Ancestor's address code by providing more complete hierarchical addresses for lower level object units increased the work of coders and labelers. Since the HCLA at each successive level contained the complete address for the previous levels in the hierarchy, a duplication of effort resulted that was unnecessarily complex and costly. Even when a combination of address and code was found that minimized the overall cost, the reference material needed by end users could fill a large volume.
One major unsolved problem in prior art that is solved in the present invention was that individual tracked object units had to be separately transferred within the hierarchy, even though object units at lower levels in the hierarchy might be physically moved in the same operation with its Ancestor.